My friends who are mothers to both girls and boys insist that gender differences are hardwired from birth. A three-year old boy, raised in a home where no toy guns are allowed, will inevitably create one from his Legos or nibble his sandwich into the shape of a pistol. He tears around the house yelling “Bam! Bam! You’re dead!” while his sister runs away and cries.

Gender stereotypes abound. They may amuse or frustrate us, but they won’t go away. Most persistent are the perceived gender differences around money. Women are spenders, men are investors. Men are overconfident about their financial decisions; women worry and hesitate because they think they do not know enough. Women, even very rich ones, fear becoming “bag ladies,” whereas the term “bag man” does not exist, except to refer to a gangster who carries ill-gotten money in a valise.

But is it possible that some of these differences are disappearing? In March 2009, the Washington Post hosted a panel on “Testosterone and the Crash,” which explored the question as to whether our financial crisis would have been as deep or severe if women were running Wall Street. Patricia McGinnis, one of the panellists and a Georgetown University professor of leadership and management, claimed that it is generation, and not gender, that matters in the financial world. She sees the Gen Y-ers as far less bound by gender labels than their baby boomer parents, and recalls when her young daughter piped up at the dinner table to ask,

”Mommy, can men ever be the bosses?”

A recent national survey by Findlaw.com, a legal information website, supports this hypothesis that times, well, they are a-changing. The poll found that women between the ages of 18 and 34 are taking charge of financial management to a greater degree than women aged 35 to 65-plus. They are also less likely to squabble about money with their spouses and know more about their partners’ incomes, debts, and assets when they marry than do older women. It appears that the label “financially clueless woman” may carry an expiration date, and in a few more decades will be completely off the shelves.

But there are certain financial differences between men and women that will not disappear anytime soon. Because women have greater longevity than men, because they bear children and, as a result, move in and out of the workplace, because they are society’s caretakers of both children and the elderly, financial security takes a lot more work for women. In a word, they need more wealth than men, but have fewer opportunities to build it. Consider these relatively permanent differences and the factors that should change but stubbornly haven’t, (such as equal pay for equal work) and the argument that financial planning needs to be different for women, both in content and delivery, becomes very compelling.

I believe that when gender discrimination is not anticipated, it is less apt to be found. Our young women, who take for granted the equality that their baby-boomer mothers fought so hard for, may indeed have the financial confidence and knowledge that older generations of women never acquired. But they still must be mindful that they are not financially equal to men. Their road to money success is a bit steeper, a bit rockier than their male counterparts. They need, in other words, to be the financially stronger sex.